Free .Net Deployment Tool - Unleash It!

Upon looking for a good cheap deployment tool, I was referred to a free and very useful deployment tool called Unleash It! (formerly WebDeploy). It allows FTP & network deployments, as well as different profiles for deployments.

I've tested this out on a web service that I've written, pusing it to our DEV box and worked great and fast. I'd highly recommend this product if your looking for a cheap, quick and easy web deployment tool. It also integrates within Visual Studio .Net.

.Net 2005 Beta & Longhorn

Over a month ago I attempted an installation of .Net 2005 Beta on a Longhorn Virtual Machine image on my laptop. Burn, Burn Burn....

That virtual machine image went down and never came back up again. I now have a .Net 2005 Beta instance on an XP VM and I will have a review shortly.

Just an FYI for those considering putting the two on the same image.... I would recommend against it.

Happy trails!

FireFox Preview Release 1.0

FireFox (next generation verison of Mozilla) has been released...well sorta. A Preview Release has been published, which is something between Release Candidate and RTM. Oh well.

Anyway, my review in this product is that it is an Excellent browser. In almost ever fashion it is better than Internet Explorer 6.0. The internal pop-up blocker for FireFox actually works all the time, whereas Internet Explorer's conveniently doesn't work, at places like MSN.

FireFox also starts up very fast and loads web pages faster than IE. It also keeps track of your downloads in case you ever forget where you downloaded stuff to.

Another great feature of this browser is the capability of "Extensions". These work like Internet Explorer add-ins do, except there is a more existent community programming Extension for FireFox than add-ins for IE. There are many downloadable add-ins for FireFox, among them are: AdBlocking software, Image zooming, Web Develeoper extensions and much more.

Of course, you'll still need to use Internet Explorer for many websites that either don't run well in FireFox or use ActiveX Controls, however FireFox is a great browser and worth the download.

Windows XP SP2

Well after downloading Windows XP SP2 a couple of weeks back and burning it, I've finally had a chance to install and review this major update for Windows XP. First the size is very large so if you plan on downloading it you better have broadband since it weighs in at almost 500 MB (or under 300MB compressed).

You can download this service pack from MSDN if you have an MSDN subscription, otherwise Microsoft prefers that you use Windows Update to install this or you can download this at Microsoft.com (Click Here).

Personally for me the installation went very smooth. The largest improvement this service pack provides is an enhanced client firewall. I really like this feature and recommend leaving it on even if you have a hardware firewall. The next biggest improvement is for Internet Explorer and it now contains a pop-up blocker, FINALLY!!!

Some people have reported problems however and had to reinstall Windows entirely so I'd backup you first, although admittedly I didn't.

BugTracker Status Aug '04

Progress is going well on BugTracker. Base security for it is written, 90% of the database complete. Much web GUI still needs to be fleshed out however, I still need graphics. I have finished writing a basic cascading stylesheet for the system though.

Only major issue I've faced is a Cookie-Session based problem. PHP isn't storing my state how I want it to and I believe it has to do with the lifecycle of a PHP script and thus my Cookie-Headers are not being passed to the client, thus session id not being stored. I feel I am close to a resolution on this issue.

Email me if you'd like to help me on this project.

PHP 5.0 Released

Major PHP release is final.... so.... what's the verdict? I don't know. Doesn't work on Windows yet. Although setup and compressed archives are available for PHP 5.0, I encountered several parsing problems, particularly with the PEAR & PEAR DB libraries that I use.

FYI: PEAR DB is a PHP database abstraction layer.

I'll wait for a fix for PHP 5.0 or a version of PEAR that works with the new version before I test drive the new engine.

Among the new features on PHP 5.0 are:

• Zend Engine II with a new object model and dozens of new features
• XML support has been rewritten
• New SimpleXml extensions
• New built-in SOAP extensions (for interop with web services)
• New MySql extensions
• SQLite is bundled with this version of PHP
• Improvements to streams

and reportedly more...

BugTracker in Development

I'm presently working on a BugTracking tool that I began working on here in July. I'm writing it in PHP with a MySql backend. All is going well with both technologies, I think PHP & MySql is a good fit for a BugTracking tool. Both technologies are truely multiplatform and free.

I'll post updates of my progress in the future. I need some help in the graphics area if your interested in helping me feel free to email me.

Microsoft Programmer's Toolkit (July '04)

Monthly I'd like to post links to download all the latest tools a Microsoft programmer will need to do their job. I'll link to updates of common tools and utilities as they come out.

• .NET Framework SDK
  
• .NET Framework SDK SP2


• Jet 4.0 SP3


• MDAC 2.8


• MS XML Core Service 4.0 SP2


• SQL Server 2000 SP3

Good MSDN Article: Integrating Analysis Services with Reporting Services

Sean Boon has written a good article explaining how to use Microsoft's SQL Server Reporting Services to report on data within SQL Servers Analysis Service (Microsoft's OLAP solution). He also has written a helpful example which is a Reporting Services project that consumes the data in the Analysis Service example Foodmart, which is installed with Analysis Services by default.

Blog Now open

No need to hold thou breath any longer. My Blog is now open, I will be sure to fill it all sorts of knowledge and ideas as time goes on.